Often the best managers look around, see other managers being incompetent and messing up people’s natural abilities, and want to fix the problem even if it requires them to become managers.
Often the worst managers decide at a young age they’re good leaders, can lead people to do better than they would themselves, and decide they want to get into management.
I make this distinction because even group 1 managers usually have to raise their hand and say something like “can we please stop messing this up. I can help.”
Rarely is an awesome individual magically called upon to become a manager, particularly by poor managers who are already messing stuff up.
In an environment where management is good, there’s a longer cycle of development, mentorship, and nudging of high potential people into management. But if you’re not in that environment, you probably need to ask to help make it better. It won’t happen magically.
> Rarely is an awesome individual magically called upon to become a manager, particularly by poor managers who are already messing stuff up
There's a passage in Platos' Republic which is illuminating about this particular circumstance.
And I quote from [1].
"""
And for this reason, I said, money and honour have no attraction for
them; good men do not wish to be openly demanding payment for governing
and so to get the name of hirelings, nor by secretly helping themselves
out of the public revenues to get the name of thieves. And not being
ambitious they do not care about honour. Wherefore necessity must
be laid upon them, and they must be induced to serve from the fear
of punishment.
And this, as I imagine, is the reason why the forwardness
to take office, instead of waiting to be compelled, has been deemed
dishonourable.
Now the worst part of the punishment is that he who
refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself.
And the fear of this, as I conceive, induces the good to take office,
not because they would, but because they cannot help --not under the
idea that they are going to have any benefit or enjoyment themselves,
but as a necessity, and because they are not able to commit the task
of ruling to any one who is better than themselves, or indeed as good.
"""
Stuff that was true two millenia ago, still continues to be the same.
The main reason I took my first management position was after I remembered the pain of refusing a previous offer and getting an awful manager to lead the team.
Though I do not think I'm very good at managing myself. Though I might be an OK leader.
In my experience, leadership and management are pretty disjoint. You can be good at one and not good at the other. Although, FWIW, I suspect that your introspection about whether or not you're a good manager means you're a lot better than you're giving yourself credit for.
Agree, they are different. Middle managers particularly don't have to be leaders, and in many cases shouldn't be. But for things to work well, they do need to be good at management with all of the people skills, cat herding, and organizing that go along with it. In my experiences, the best managers were the ones who protected their teams from the whims of the 'leaders' at the higher levels. The worst ones were the ones who carried out their every wish without a second thought.
Great comment. I was reading a book about Lincoln recently and this exact sense of being compelled was upon him. Him as a politician had him saying things he morally didn’t agree with. Once he won the game, he was able to instill the spirit of his philosophy and do something above society’s morals which we look back upon making him one of the best presidents to date.
This passage is discussing the idea that good people do not want to hold public office because they do not want to be seen as hirelings who are only interested in payment, or as thieves who are secretly enriching themselves at the expense of the public. The author argues that good people are not ambitious and do not care about honor, so they must be forced to serve out of fear of punishment. The worst punishment, according to the author, is the fear of being ruled by someone who is worse than oneself. This fear is what ultimately compels good people to take office, even though they do not want to and do not expect to benefit from it. The author suggests that good people take office out of a sense of necessity, because they are not able to entrust the task of ruling to anyone who is better than themselves.
Really excellent job illustrating chatgpt obliterates nuance, perfect for those unwilling to read beyond a paragraph and contemplate their lingering thoughts and questions.
I never wanted to be a manager until I experienced one of the worst managers I had ever run across and decided maybe I should revise that particular opinion.
I'm now a VP and I make it my goal not to be that kind of a manager. I do still sometimes wish I were just a regular coder though. There is a lot of stuff about being a manager I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
I also miss doing the individual contributor stuff. But… I know the business. I know the team. I know the pain points, why the exist, and the organizational dynamics that allow them to persist. Now that I have moved from informal to formal leadership, I try to focus on:
(1) adroitly executing the approvals and things where I could screw up the team by being slow
(2) coaching individual team members to build on their strengths and mitigate their weaknesses
(3) improving our corporate processes, tools and culture to systematically make it easier for the team to do the high value stuff we need from them
(4) recruiting excellent people who bring new perspectives and experiences to broaden our horizons… ideally coachable people ready to participate enthusiastically in #2
(5) crafting a team strategy that guides individual team members to work that utilizes their skills while combining with their colleagues to deliver more than we could individually… all in line with the overall corporate direction and communicated in a way that is congruent with the current political winds.
ICs can gain high levels of leadership leverage, not via teams and people (thought possible), but via the technical projects/designs/paradigms they implement.
Not the above commenter, but these were things I experienced as a middle manager that really sucked:
- Having to always sell the company message. No promotion because the system is fucked? Sorry, you gotta say “better luck next time”. No raises because the company is being cheap? Sorry, gotta say “the cost of labor has not gone up even though inflation is through the roof”. Say what the company tells you, not what’s personally right.
- Certain kinds of politics where you have to screw over other teams or people in order for your team or reports to not get screwed over. Many companies are very dog eat dog.
- Layoffs and firing people. It’s not as bad as getting laid off/fired but firing someone or trying to keep the rest of your team focused when a team member got laid off is not fun at all.
- Overall, managers almost never get credit when something goes well but are always blamed when something goes wrong. It’s a really thankless job.
I agree with every word of this. I would also add that there's a third category, or maybe a 2.b: individual contributors in their 30s and 40s who look ahead to their future and say "well, I guess I better become a manager at some point" without having any particular aptitude or even an intrinsic desire.
Many organizations have quite intelligently created parallel paths for contributors to keep advancing, which somewhat mitigates this effect. However, in the past, this was a widespread phenomenon, and it's still out there to some extent. You find contributors who think management is easier, or more prestigious, or less prone to ageism, and so will switch tracks.
I think this kind of thinking highly depends on what field you are in.
My father worked in a technical role all his live in a automotive plant. (Eventually being technically responsible for overall design and implementation of all production lines).
A lot of his former collegues moved into management during the early 2000's. Most got fired after the great recession because being a manager is considered a non skill compared to actually contributing to the actual core bussiness.
I would argue being responsible for a major operational part of the business is far more prestigious then being a manager.
I have a startup of 3 growing up to 15, and I have this awesome
opportunity of hiring a career manager who’s sensible and everything. But he can’t code.
I’ve erred for a month, but I just told him no. I still wonder whether I’m in the “worst managers reject good managers” category or in the “you gotta belong to the people you manage” category. But being able to do is very high on my list.
To have a large impact in most orgs, one often needs to directly influence how other people work. In software, the leverage might come from technical output instead.
This might be a deeper reason why moving into management is often necessary for most orgs. Exceptions include software-focused organizations where code can be one's channel for impact.
it is a very real fear. When you look around and realize everyone that works at a company that is over 60 is in upper management it becomes clear that you either move up or out. I have also noticed it is sometimes hard to keep up with certain types of work after a certain age. The strength you retain as you get older is wisdom of experience.
And you get promoted until what you do changes so much that you’re not good at it anymore, so you can’t justify another promotion and you remain a middle manager.
They're not the worst, they're just a waste of money, they could just not exist and probably everyone else would be better off. They're a -2.
That said, there are plenty of managers who put in a lot of effort into ruining everyone else life to satisfy their ego or what their understanding of the job is. They're -100000.
> Often the worst managers decide at a young age they’re good leaders, can lead people to do better than they would themselves, and decide they want to get into management.
Pretty much this, but I want to refine the statement: "the worst managers are those who _want_ to manage."
Yup, the best manager I ever had (by far) did not want to be manager. But she was made manager when half our team was laid off (including our manager) and she was the most senior of the bunch left. She was amazing because she was good at telling higher up's "no" when they would try to take advantage of our team.
The worst manager I ever had desperately wanted to become manager from a group of IC's and brown-nosed his way into the job. His first day as manager he says "I was promoted to manager because I can do all of your jobs better than you can". He could not. He was horrible (and was eventually fired).
Did that company have more systemic problems whereby that person wasn't identified as a complete c** and therefore inappropriate for any remotely leadership position?
The "eventually" in your last sentence makes me think all must not have been well elsewhere.
There is how you become a manager as you call out, but what happens after? How to stay an excellent IC as you spend more time in management and become a manager of managers? Picking up a small enhancement it big once in a while can be helpful for you, but also really interruptive for the team. You can code on your own time, but that only goes so far. What are strategies to keep these qualities a manager brings who also is a top IC even after years managing and managing managers?
Why do you need to be a top IC after years managing managers? Some of the worst managers I've seen tried to cling too much to the technical details, which is smothering to the actual ICs.
I struggle a lot with this, I’m trying todo some side projects to keep up but man it’s hard. I think the only way is to on a high level keep up with new technologies and best practices.
I have a not-so-small network of people I unofficially mentor, but on the org chart I’m an IC. I’m happy with the situation, but dread the day I need to manage somebody to get things done.
Often the best managers look around, see other managers being incompetent and messing up people’s natural abilities, and want to fix the problem even if it requires them to become managers.
Often the worst managers decide at a young age they’re good leaders, can lead people to do better than they would themselves, and decide they want to get into management.
I make this distinction because even group 1 managers usually have to raise their hand and say something like “can we please stop messing this up. I can help.”
Rarely is an awesome individual magically called upon to become a manager, particularly by poor managers who are already messing stuff up.
In an environment where management is good, there’s a longer cycle of development, mentorship, and nudging of high potential people into management. But if you’re not in that environment, you probably need to ask to help make it better. It won’t happen magically.